The museum is a constant target for criticism, whether from artists, thinkers, curators or the public. From the 20th-century avant-gardes to the present, the museum’s suspect position has generated iconoclastic actions, attacks, utopias and alternative exhibition spaces. This anthology is devoted to the “anti-museum,” through anti-art, the anti-artist and anti-exhibition, as well as anti-architecture, anti-philosophy, anti-religion, anti-cinema and anti-music. From Dada to noise music, from “Everything is Art” to NO!art, the Japanese avant-gardes to Lettrist cinema, plus major protest figures as Gustav Metzger, Henry Flynt, Graciela Carnevale and Lydia Lunch, The Anti-Museum sketches a polyphonic panorama where negation is accompanied by a powerful breath of life.
This encyclopedic tome includes the work of over 80 artists and writers including Marcel Broodthaers, Maurizio Cattelan, Maria Eichhorn, Robert Smithson, Jean Tinguely, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Yvonne Rainer, Guillaume Apollinaire, Kenneth Goldsmith, George Maciunas, and Bob Nickas.